Remembering the late Hadar Goldin, who fell during Operation Protective Edge

Yair Alkalai fought alongside the late Hadar Goldin, who fell in battle during Operation Protective Edge. Almost 3 years later, Alkalai speaks about when he first heard Hadar was kidnapped, the rescue operations and the bitter news that he was killed.

The last time that Yair Alkalai, an officer in the Givati Brigade, saw Hadar was before the Israeli forces searched the tunnels: “As soon as there was an encounter, we ran to the area. We tried to understand what happened. We had an officer who was kidnapped. After an assessment of the situation, we decided that we would enter the tunnel in order to find Hadar.”

He related that the squad entered, trying to locate him with flashlights and shouting: “We did not know if he was dead or alive at this stage. In my head, I thought about how to find Hadar. I hoped to find him alive but to my sorrow, we discovered that this was not the situation.

Alkalai claimed that he knew Hadar very well: “It was very difficult for me that such a good man fell. This was a great loss for the military and the country. I admired him and thought that he was an excellent officer. I lost a person whom I greatly admired.”